The US government is waging an air war in Iraq. "In recent
months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased," Seymour Hersh
reported in the December 5 edition of The New Yorker. "Most of the targets
appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian
border."

Hersh added: "As yet, neither
Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about
the air war."

Here's a big reason why: Major US news
outlets are dodging the extent of the Pentagon's bombardment from the air, an
avoidance all the more egregious because any drawdown of US troop levels in Iraq is very likely to be
accompanied by a step-up of the air war.

So, according to the LexisNexis media
database, how often has the phrase "air war" appeared in The New York
Times this year with reference to the current US military effort in Iraq?

As of early December, the answer is: Zero.

And how often has the phrase "air
war" appeared in The Washington Post in 2005?

The answer: Zero.

And how often has "air war" been
printed in Time, the nation's largest-circulation news magazine, this year?

Zero.

This extreme media avoidance needs to
change. Now. Especially because all the recent talk in Washington about
withdrawing some US troops from Iraq is setting the stage for the American
military to do more of its killing in that country from the air.

The last few weeks have brought a dramatic
shift in the national debate over Iraq war policies. On Capitol Hill and in major
news outlets, the option of swiftly withdrawing US troops - previously treated
as unthinkable by most partisan leaders and media pundits - became part of
serious mainstream media conversation.

At least implicitly, news coverage has
viewed the number of boots on the ground as the measure of the US war effort in Iraq. And as a
consequence, public discussion assumes - incorrectly - that a reduction of
American troop levels there will mean a drop in the Pentagon's participation in
the carnage.

In fact, beneath the surface of mass-media
discourse, there are strong indications that the US military command will intensify its
bombardment of Iraq while reducing the presence of American occupying troops before
the US congressional
elections next fall. With the White House eager to show progress toward US disengagement from Iraq, we should expect
enormous media spin to accompany any pullout of troops in 2006.

"The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the
most significant - and underreported - aspect of the fight against the
insurgency," Hersh's New Yorker article observed. The magnitude of the US bombing is a mystery
in American media coverage relying on what's spoon-fed by the Pentagon.
"The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily
accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the
tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War."

Surely the media spinners in the White
House are keenly aware that the air war in Iraq has been flying largely beneath the US media's
radar - inattention that augurs well for a scenario of reducing US troop levels while
stepping up the air war. Hersh's reporting suggests that's in the offing:
"A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the president's
public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by
American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by US warplanes are seen as a way to
improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat
units."

Mainstream news outlets in the United States haven't yet
acknowledged a possibility that is both counterintuitive and probable: The US
military could end up killing more Iraqi people when there are fewer Americans
in Iraq. "Lowering the
number of US troops in conjunction with a more violent air war and creation of
an Iraqi client military, as some are suggesting, will likely increase the
number of Iraqis killed," says Joseph Gerson of the American Friends
Service Committee. "This would in effect be 'changing the color of the
corpses' in order to make the continuing war more palatable to the US public."

There is a strong precedent for such a
politically driven strategy. Midway through 1969, President Richard Nixon
announced the start of a "Vietnamization" policy that cut the number
of US troops in Vietnam by nearly half a million over a three-year period. But during
that time, the tonnage rate of US bombs dropped on Vietnam actually increased.

A similar sequence of events is apt to get
underway next year, before the November elections determine which party will
control the House and Senate through 2008. Caught between the desire to prevent
a military defeat in Iraq and the need to shore up Republican prospects at home in the face
of an unpopular war, President Bush is very likely to keep escalating the US air war in Iraq while reducing US troop levels there.
And he has good reason to hope that the American news media will continue to
evade the air war's horrendous consequences for Iraqi people.

Norman Solomon is the author of the new
book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
For information, go to: WarMadeEasy.com.